30 Day Game Time to return with ‘Quantum Rise’?

Published on 04. Nov, 2008 ... written by Jacob Mei, Tags: Articles, Latest

by Jacob Mei … I don’t mean to gloat, but I have to say that I saw this coming for awhile now and said so in numerous threads. GTCs have been steadily increasing in price since the removal of the 30, 50 and 100 day GTCs and the introduction of the 60 day GTC as the sole card one could buy. With prices intermittently hitting and surpassing 600 million ISK per 60 day card and the recent removal of Ghost training, it is hard not to see the obvious move that CCP made.

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, you should check the Quantum Rise content page and then the latest dev blog entitled “I can Resist Anything but Temptation”. Though the blog covers a lot, towards the bottom you will see what I am going on about, a new feature that is coming with Quantum Rise that will partly introduce GTC trading to the in game market.

The way this is being done, according to the blog, is that card buyers take their codes, enter them in the ESC menu in game, and that 60 day card is suddenly turned into two 30 day CONCORD Pilot Licenses that can be then sold either on the market or contract system. No details yet on how exactly the buying mechanics will work, for example if they will follow current mechanics in that you have to at least be in the same region to buy (and in the case of the market, see) goods or if you can be clear across the galaxy to buy it, however if it’s the former chances are good that most, if not all, of these CONCORD pilot licenses will be found in the Forge region in Jita (which asks the question of how this will play on the servers) as these licenses can not leave the station they are bought in nor can they be placed in a container. If it is indeed a case using the old system I can see a lot of people either putting alts in Jita solely to buy these licenses.

The blog also brings up why they are doing this after recently removing the 30, 50 and 100 day GTCs and says that it doesn’t break down easily into 30 day blocks, which seems to indicate that

this feature has been a long time coming and
if one reads between the lines may indicate a reintroduction of other GTCs that can break down into 30 day blocks, … 90 day GTC’s anyone? This would certainly be doable as sellers wouldn’t have to worry about alienating a bigger customer base and only depend on the few who could afford a higher price.

The big question though is if long time GTC sellers will actually go ahead and do this. The fact that they can split their 60 day cards into 30 and just charge half for the 30 day pieces means that it will be easier on the buyers wallets but anyone who has spent time in the timecode market can tell you that sell orders are often filled within moments of their posting if the price is right might make the extra few steps of converting a 60 day card into two 30 days not worth it. If enough sellers though do use the system the rest may be forced to adopt it as well to stay competitive, after all, when you buy a GTC you want the isk that thing can bring now. Only time will tell though if this actually all works out.

I am left wondering though why all of this wasn’t done in one swoop. Surely CCP could have done away with the other GTCs and introduce this system when it was ready at the same time. It would have made a lot of things easier on the players who use GTCs and would have avoided the whole drama bomb that occurred on the forums. Oh well, I guess that’s business for you.

The dev blog can be found here.